Not my favorite month so far.

It's only halfway through January, and let me tell you, this is already not my favorite month in recent history. It's been hard, much harder than I thought it would be. Some of the difficulties have been minor or all in my head, others have been hard but not something I can share with the world and some have been expected but hard nonetheless.

I'll start with the two hardest. The first is that we had to make the decision to put our family pet to sleep. My husband and I have had Pepper since before we had children, and she was as much a part of our family as our children were. I joked with him that I was actually more married to the dog since he has been deployed twice since we got her, when he was gone she was my protector, cuddler, and the one whose shoulder I cried on. We knew that she wouldn't be around forever, she was over her minimum life expectancy and her hips had been steadily getting worse for years. So we decided to keep from having her being constant pain, or so drugged up that she couldn't function it was kindest to her to have her put to sleep. So first thing on the 8th of January DH took Pepper to the vet and came home without her.

The other hard thing has been that we found out that DH will be deploying again this fall. This one wasn't unexpected, in fact we can pretty much plan on it, but I never stop hoping that he will get to stay home.

The not so hard, but not so fun thing, I turned 30. I know that 30 isn't old anymore, but it felt like I was ending an era that I wasn't sure I wanted to be over. Actually my 30th birthday was the 8th, the same day that we put Pepper to sleep. It wasn't slated to be a stellar day but all in all turned out ok. My best friend drove up here for the weekend and we went shopping, then we went out to dinner and watched some football.

So that has been the start of the year 2011 for me. I am hoping that it can only go up from here. I do have some fun stuff planned for this blog in the next few weeks, and a few more recipes that are huge hits with my family, and of course I'll be experimenting with some too. I can't wait!